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Category talk:Production use documents
Internal production documents I suggest that we have a category for documents and reference works written for internal use in Star Trek TV and film production. This category would contain Star Trek is..., Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers'/Directors' Guide, Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers' Technical Manual, Star Trek: Voyager Writers/Directors Guide, Star Trek: Voyager Technical Manual, and any other such documents created and used by production personnel, and not intended for wider distribution to the public. (As an aside, do we know whether manuals/"Bibles" like this were created for TAS, DS9 and/or ENT? For the current Secret Hideout productions, I'd imagine that any such documents, if they exist, would be regarded as confidential, but time will tell.) At the moment, Star Trek is... is in Category:Production, and the others are in Category:Reference books. The category I propose could be placed in both as a subcategory. The name could be Internal production documents or simply Production documents, or Internal reference works or production reference works if "documents" seems too broad. (We don't need to invite the creation of pages for every memo Leonard Maizlish sent on Gene Roddenberry's behalf.) We also would want to be clear that the category does not include scripts. Thoughts? —Josiah Rowe (talk) 03:51, August 23, 2019 (UTC) :Neutral – While I see no burning need for the category (yet), I'm in itself not opposed to the idea, and have a slight preference for production reference works as it implies the non-inclusion of memos, and agree with your notes on Star Trek is..., and scripts (which, when added, should IMO be added as behind-the-scenes info to their respective episodes/films). As for the "Bibles" on DS9, ENT and TOS for that matter (the famed original "Writer's Bible", The Star Trek guide), that is a given, as I've seen them (or copies thereof) offered on eBay, though the 12-page Braga/Berman written ENT one is exceptionally hard to come by, possibly due to the bad reception of the series at the time. TAS I'm not aware of and doubt if one even exists, nor am I aware of tech manuals for either DS9 or ENT; while "logic dictates" that one should exist, I've never seen one for DS9 (and I've extensively searched for it, as I own the other two), and very much doubt if one was ever written for ENT, likely due to the fact that tech manual co-author Rick Sternbach was not involved with ENT, which would also explain the potential absence of a DS9 tech manual, as Sternbach was only, albeit very extensively, involved in the pilot episode of that series. A Star Trek II Writer's/Director's Guide bible exists though, which is reproduced in its entirety in Star Trek Phase II: The Lost Series. Another document that should be added to the array is "Enterprise" Flight Manual, in effect the first known internal tech manual...--Sennim (talk) 08:32, August 23, 2019 (UTC) Agreed on including "Enterprise" Flight Manual; I meant to include it myself but forgot. And I think I had mentally conflated The Star Trek guide with Star Trek is.... If and when we create a page for that, we’ll have to make sure to distinguish it from The Star Trek Guide with something other than capitalization. —Josiah Rowe (talk) 13:32, August 23, 2019 (UTC) ::Seems to be a step in the right direction. --LauraCC (talk) 15:08, August 23, 2019 (UTC) :Given the issue some further thought; if decided upon the creation of the cat, it should IMO be disambigued as "Reference works (production use)" , not "production" only, as it can be misconstrued as also including commercial books like the various The Making of... books, and also in order to stay in front of potential future specific reference book cats – a "Category:Reference books (companions)" comes to mind actually. Furthermore when the The Star Trek guide page is created, I propose the The Star Trek Guide page to become renamed/disambigued to The Star Trek Guide (Amereon), as the latter is, in all honesty, a rather obscure one...--Sennim (talk) 13:15, August 28, 2019 (UTC) The potential for confusion with reference works about production is why I suggested the category name include "internal". After all, we know that some works created for commercial/general readership were subsequently used by production staff (the various editions of the Star Trek Encyclopedia come to mind). The distinguishing feature of this category should be that the works were created for the use of staffers working on Star Trek TV shows and/or films. As for the proposal of "Reference works (production use)", do we generally use parentheses to indicate a subcategory like that? I don’t see that elsewhere in a quick browse through the category tree, but perhaps I’m not looking in the right place. (Is there a way to see all categories at once?) Personally, I don’t like the look of parentheses in a category, as if it were a sort of disambiguation; I’d prefer something like "Internal production reference works" or even the (wordy but clear) "Reference works created for internal production use". What name do others prefer? —Josiah Rowe (talk) 14:48, August 28, 2019 (UTC) :If others agree with your assessment, then I'd suggest the cat to be called "Production use reference works" or "Production created reference works". Btw, parenthesized cats are in wide use in the image categories--Sennim (talk) 15:18, August 28, 2019 (UTC) ::The full category tree can be viewed . It is general practice to not use disambiguations in the main and production categories unless they are required, while the maintenance categories do use them for subdivisions of a single topic. ::Categories shouldn't start so specific to the point of excluding similar items, but rather be as general as possible and then be narrowed down with subcategories if they are needed. With that in mind, "Production documents" is fine, provided it is under reference books and production material, and if further subcategories are needed then that should become apparent after the category is created. ::Also, stop creating links for suggestions, it just makes work for later. - * 15:36, August 28, 2019 (UTC) So... a week later, it looks like there is a weak consensus to create this category, but no real consensus on what it should be called. I’m fine with "Production documents", if we’re not worried that it’s too broad... but I’ll give it a few more days to make sure nobody else has an issue or concern with the name. —Josiah Rowe (talk) 20:38, September 4, 2019 (UTC) :Taking Archduk's suggestion to heed, I'd go for "Production use documents"...--Sennim (talk) 11:43, September 5, 2019 (UTC) Created under that name. –Josiah Rowe (talk) 01:26, September 11, 2019 (UTC)